Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “β”

SCHILDER, FIRST VOLUME

	    OFDEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN THE WORLD ECONOMY

Dr. Sigmund Schilder,Development Trends in the World Economy, Vol. I, Berlin, 1912.  (Vol. I:Planned?! Influences on the World Economy.)

p. 4—Disagrees with Sombart (with his theory of declining “export quota”). Says this “quota” isincreasing.

p. 6. An apparent weakening of protectionism (“signs of this”), 1910-11.

p. 6—“Unrest caused by high prices” in France in August and September 1911.Dates(N.B.): Vienna, September 17, 1911.

27-28. Agriculturetoo,is developing(not only industry), “even” (“sogar”) (p. 28, line 8 from below): “in European industrial countries”. (This “even” is a gem!)

N.B.: approachtothe problem of equilibrium—is “world agricultural purchasing power” sufficient? p. 27.)

28-29. The development of agricultural associations (evenIndiahas 3,498 with 231,000 members, according toThe Times, July 27, 1911).

Especially rapid development of agriculture in theUnited States.

In the 20th century one can expect the same inRhodesia,

30: Canada, Sudan (Egyptian), Mesopotamia.

31—Governments develop agriculture in the colonies “to obtain buyers of industrial goods”. (In India (until recently), and in Egypt, with this aim in view, Britain hasartificially“hampered” the development of industry.)

35-36—Fear of a shortage of agricultural products is unfounded. Tropics and subtropics N.B.Philippines. Only 3-5 million acres are cultivated out of 74 million. (Population is 27 per square kilometre.)

A shortage oftimber: it becomes steadily dearer; idemleather; idem textile raw materials (39).

Within the countries—an agreement between the growers ofsugar beetand the manufacturers.

47: The peasant revolt in Rumania in 1907 (spring) played a role, similar to that of the 1905-07 revolution in Russia, in improving the peasants’ position.

[N.B.: This caused the protectionist trend inGreat Britain, BelgiumandHolland: 67.]

66: TheBrusselssugar convention (March 5, 1902; renewed August 28, 1907) put an end to the unification of government andcartelexport subsidies (for sugar).

87—It is not true that “trade agreements” have prayed “bankrupt”.

98—Examples of trade agreements: an agrarian country needs cheap machinery (and its customers need cheap grain): the Bulgarian tariff of March 6-19, 1911—Austria’s agreement with Germany (1905) (chemicals; artificial indigo, etc.).

(99)—reciprocal concessions (Germany’s trade agreement with Portugal, November 30, 1908), etc.

Subtitle of Chapter IV, “Tariff Wars”:

118—“Examples of the considerably useful impact of specific tariff, wars in promoting international trade”...  Russo-German war of 1893-94,—Franco-Swiss war of 1893-95.

Those of Switzerland and Spain in 1906 (from June to September 1, 1906) (they led to aloweringof tariffs).

145. British free trade has been basedbothon hermilitarymight (the navy) and colonies.

True, an attitude of indifference to maintaining and increasing colonial possessions prevailed in Britain up to 1860s (in 1864, she even gave Greece theIonian Islands gratis, without political oreconomiccompensation).

146-48: Intensified acquisition of colonies by Britain began in theeighties. ((Cf.Hobson.)) About 1/3 of Britain’s total exports goes to her colonies; no small amount andN.B.:thisexport is “especially profitable”

151: state power (concessions, municipal and state institutions, etc.) andtrustlikewise important for capital investments: in this respect

(among the factors of “imperialism”)

154: “Inter-colonial preferential tariffs” are widely applied also in the British colonies.

Britain’svirtualprotectorate overPortugal, and partly over Spain (1901-10) ...Norway(from 1905) ...Siam(the 1860s up to 1904; in 1904 a treaty with France; theirjointprotectorate)....

“More interesting and perhaps even more significant than the examples so far mentioned [Egypt, Zanzibar...], where subtropical or tropical semi-civilised countries, after relatively short transitional stages of some few decades, have become or appear to be becoming real British colonies, are a number of other cases. These are cases where for a long time, decades or even centuries, acountry with a European civilisationmay virtually be a British protectorate, without, at least formally, being deprived of any external mark of full sovereignty.

“Portugalis the best known and outstanding example. Since the war of the Spanish Succession (1700-14) Great Britain has almost continuously used her navy, and on occasion her army, to defend Portugal’s European or over seas possessions from attacks or claims by Spain, France, etc. Conflicts between Britain, the protector, and Portugal, the protected, were accidental and, to a certain extent, family quarrels ... as, for example, the British ultimatum of January 11, 1890, against Portugal’s attempts to land-link her western and eastern colonies in Africa.

“At any rate, only British support enables Portugal to maintain her possessions—which, though not large, are nevertheless important for such a small country—on the west coast of India, in South China (Macao) and on Timor, in face of the intense international political rivalry in southern and eastern Asia. In Portuguese East Africa a kind of customs union with British South Africa has even been added to Britain’s political protectorate over Portugal” (treaty of December 18, 1901).... “And it has so far proved economically highly profitable for Portuguese East Africa. It is also a valuable acquisition, now and for the future, for British South Africa and, therefore, for Great Britain.

“This virtual protectorate of Great Britain over Portugal during its more than two hundred years’ existence has proved extremely useful to British trade and shipping [the 1703 treaty with Portugal]....

“However, ever since Great Britain adopted peaceful free trade, she has been able through diplomatic action to influence the Portuguese customs tariff in a way hardly to be achieved by any other country, even by the offer of commercial privileges or the threat of a tariff war. Besides, as the dominating power, Great Britain can make especially wide use of all export and investment opportunities involving Portuguese government concessions” (railways in Portuguese Africa, etc.)....

“And indirectly, again owing to her protectorate over Portugal, Great Britain maintains not only her position in South Africa and her influence in the Congo, but also her maritime supremacy, the firm pillar of her colonial and world-wide political and economic power. For in war or peace, Portugal puts her ports and islands at the disposal of the British fleet for training purposes and as intermediate shipping stations, allows the use of telegraph cables, etc.” (159-61)....[2]

170—Britain supported Belgium’s separation from Holland (Holland was “cut in half” as a rival) so as not to permit a powerful state near London.

175-76. The struggle (ofBritainit) against Russia over Persia (long-continued) until theagreementof June 9, 1908.

The struggle (ofBritain) against France over Siam (long-continued) until theagreementof April 8, 1904.

178 et seq. “Fourperiods of British world politics” (their designation, p. 184):

194: The British Empire (with its colonies) accounts for: “>one-quarter of international trade turnover” (reference to Vol. II, appendix IX)

214. Bukharin’s table + Japan? + Portugal (216)— 2.18 million sq. kilometres—13 million inhabitants.

220. The outlying regions often have a special (tariff) structure (distances too great even for modern facilities).

— Eastern Siberia in Russia

— Philippines in America, etc.

226. Six “special economic areas” in Russia: (1) Poland (Poles speak of “exports to Russia”); (2) the South; (3) Archangel; (4) Urals; (5) Moscow; (6) the Baltic (+Finland).

237and others. The union of the modern gigantic world states into a single economic whole is stated to be an “approach” to “universal free trade”.

Methods of colonial exploitation: appointment ofofficialsfrom the ruling nation;—seizure of land by ruling-nation magnates; high taxes (“training in labour”).

(similarly, the “semi-civilised” population in Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, Algeria, Tunisia, etc.) (258).

Germany waged a tariff war against Canada (from July 31, 1898 to March 1, 1910) because of the latter’s preferential tariffs in favour of Britain. It ended with the retention of these tariffs and a customs treaty with Germany.

Most British, Dutch and German colonies, “as far as can be foreseen”, will remain under the open-door regime in relation to aallcountries (271).Trescher(Preferential Tariffs, 1908) contested this, and Schilder says that he hastoned downhis conclusions.

As regards statecontracts(269-70), the custom every where is: preference for “one’s own” country.

“‘Open-door’ areas” (old type: Turkey (until 1908), Rumania, Bulgaria, Egypt, Morocco, Persia; new type: Congo, Afghanistan) “are almost always independent or, at least, formally independent states, and in most cases semi-civilised countries”... (274).

(1) They usually lacksovereignty. They usually pass into the hands of the Great Powers: separate parts of these areassplit off.

(3) Full independence (Japan) isextremely rare.

Ad.2.Growth of independence:

Japan in the 1890s.

Bulgaria in 1897-1909(fully sovereign!).

Siamjust now.

Siam, especially since the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, has been developing towards independence (p. 318 et seq.).

Growth of the national movement in China—Persia—Arabia—Egypt (p. 329), etc., etc.

§ IX: “The disappearance of ‘open-door’ areas is an irreversible but beneficial process for the world economy (337)... These areas are “semi-barbarian”, mostly semi civilised.... “Apple of discord of the Great Powers” (337-38)....

Chapter IX. “Foreign Capital Investments”.

Customary condition: expenditure of part of the loan onproductsof the creditor country (“unusually frequent”, 342).

Examples: Paris refused Bulgaria a loan in December 1909, and Hungary in September 1910.

During the last two decades, France hasespecially oftenhad recourse to this method.

348, note,“accumulated capital”... annuallyin France > 3,000-4,000 million francsin Germany 5,000 million francs

(Delbrückin the Reichstag, February 12, 1911).

Another method: granting a loan (or with a loan in view) to bargain for “advantages” in atrade treaty:For example, Britain (my expressions “robbed”, “squeezed”, etc.)

Sometimes countries which borrow capital lend it toothercountries, “trading in capital”: e.g., the United States borrows from Britain and lends to South America, etc., etc. (p. 365 et seq.).

Switzerlandreadily lends to other countries (higher rate of interest), sets up factories inprotectionistcountries, and so on (p. 367).

The 1909 report of the Austro-Hungarian consulate in Buenos Aires calculates the capital invested inArgentinaas follows (p. 371)

— Foreign capital inCanada(1910)—12,687 million francs (p. 373)

— Foreign capital inMexico(1886-1907)—3,343

(the remainder) German, French, Spanish, etc.

The author gives the table only on pp. 381-82 (without + and —), the remaining figures (capital investment) fromThe Statistare only in the text, moreover (curiously!), while giving annual data on imports for 1870-1911, he does not compute them in seven-year periods!

The author’s conclusion is that, though the capital investment statistics are not fully accurate (none ofprivatecapital investments), they adequately show the correlation (between thedeclinein the excess of imports and thegrowthof capital investment) (p. 392).

|| End of Volume I ||

[1]See present edition, Vol. 22. p. 261.—Ed.

[2]See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 288-64.—Ed.

[3]Ibid., p. 296.—Ed.

[4]See p. 78 of this volume—Ed.

[5]See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 244.—Ed.

[6]See present edition, Vol. 22. p. 245.—Ed.

[7]Ibid., p. 245.—Ed.

[8]Ibid., p. 263.—Ed.

[9]Thus given by Schilder.—Ed.

[10]See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 278.—Ed.

[11]The petty-bourgeois American economistHenry George(1839-1897) maintained that the chief and universal cause for the division of the population into rich and poor was expropriation of the land from the people. Poverty was thus due to the land monopoly, and it could be eliminated, he declared, by the bourgeois state nationalising the land, leasing it to individuals and using the rent for social needs. In reality bourgeois land nationalisation does not undermine the foundations of capitalism, but assists its development, and does not save the working people from poverty and ruin. Of the “declamations of Henry George” and similar petty-bourgeois doctrines, Karl Marx wrote: “The whole thing is thus simply a socialistically decked-out attempt tosave capitalist ruleand actuallyre-establishit on an even wider basis than its present one.”  (See Marx’s letter to Sorge, June 20, 1881, and Engels’s preface to the American edition of hisCondition of the Working Class in England.) p. 98